What I Wanted To Say
by Tropical Medlies
Summary: Four times Paige tries to ask Emily out and one time Emily says yes. One-shot.


1. Paige took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves, and ran a hand through her hair, making sure it looked presentable. Next she glanced over her outfit, trying to reassure herself that it was cute enough without looking like she was trying too hard. Finally, she glanced back into her locker to check over her minimal make up and give herself a little pep talk.

"All right, McCullers. You can do this. You're strong. You've faced tougher than this. You've won dozens of swim competitions; you're a state champion. You've faced down Nick McCullers, for God's sake." She had to smile at that, knowing that making fun of her father was a rare thing she allowed herself. Satisfied, she closed her locker door and turned around, only to stop short and freeze up.

Emily Fields was walking down the hall, flanked by Hanna Marin and Aria Montgomery (Spencer Hastings was off studying somewhere, no doubt) and the three girls were laughing at something. Emily looked beautiful, all bronze skin, dark eyes, and wide smile, and Paige's stomach twisted and turned over on itself and she bit her lip, suddenly unsure of everything.

As the three girls headed towards her, Paige became very, very aware of everything about her: her long hair, curled over her shoulders, which was clearly the wrong move today; her outfit, a casual shirt with a girly black vest over it and jeans that clearly screamed "lesbian!" in all the wrong ways; how unattractive and awkward and just plain inferior she looked beside Emily.

Yet as they moved through the crowd of people going to their classes and lockers Emily's eyes found Paige's and she smiled - that mysterious little half-smile that drove Paige crazy and made her knees a little weak - and then she was gone, blending in with the rest of the students of Rosewood High. Paige let out a breath and slumped back against her locker, banging her head against it in frustration.

—

2. "Great job, girls!" the swim coach called out, tucking her clipboard under her arm. "Head to the locker room, you're done for the day."

The girls pulled themselves out of the pool and the majority of them did follow the coach's instructions and go to the locker rooms, chattering the entire way. Paige hung back, though, finding her towel and using it to wring out the water from her hair. Having her hair so much longer was beginning to be a bit of a pain, she was finding, especially when it came to swimming, but - and she wouldn't admit this to anyone - Emily seemed to like it. She hadn't outright admitted it, but the other day she had touched it in the hallway and said that it looked nice that day.

Emily. The two of them were on friendly enough terms and talked every few days in between classes, and they had bumped into each other at the Rear Window Brew, Emily's new workplace, but other than that there hadn't been much interaction. Ever since Paige had failed to ask her out nearly a month ago her confidence had been shot and she was just working on slowly building it up again. She felt like someday she would be able to do it, but what if Emily said no? Or what if Emily had already found another girlfriend and Paige just had no idea? They weren't on good enough terms for her to know that kind of information, and while she hadn't seen Emily cozy up to any girls at Rosewood High that didn't mean that she wasn't dating someone at another school. Maybe rekindling anything with Emily was just out of the question entirely and Paige would have to learn to ignore her feelings until they graduated.

"Paige?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice behind her and actually did trip forward a little, banging her knee against the metal leg of the diving board. "Shit," she swore, leaning down to rub it.

Emily bit her lip, moving forward a step or two. "Oh, Paige, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you, I was just coming to ask you if you were going back to the locker room any time soon. Coach wants to talk to us about the next meet."

Paige looked up at Emily and her throat closed up around her response. Even with her wet hair tumbling around her shoulders and her face devoid of make up Emily was the most beautiful girl Paige had ever seen in her entire life. The urge to ask her out right there - just the two of them, by the pool where they had first met, with Paige still in her swimsuit and Emily in her large cover-up shirt - was overwhelming, but it wasn't right. Emily's dark eyes shifted between Paige's, curious.

"Paige?"

"What? Oh, um, I'll be right there," Paige finally managed, and Emily smiled at her before turning and walking away. Paige watched her and wondered if she could just throw herself back in the pool and live in there forever.

—

3. There was a plan this time. There was a solid, foolproof, cannot fail plan that involved Paige asking Emily out. Emily might not have said yes, but Paige was going to get the words out and feel like she accomplished something major that she had been sitting on for the last month and a half. Her feelings had been there for a year now, at the least, but trying to ask her out was taking forever because she kept chickening out and that was not the McCullers way.

The plan was simple: man up (the term wasn't technically appropriate for the situation but Paige was going to use it anyway) and just flat out _ask_. There really wasn't anything else she could do. She couldn't just wait for Emily to fall out of the sky into her lap and suddenly want to date her, nor could she sit around and wait for Emily to make the first move because, although they had been talking more and more, it didn't seem as though she would make the first move in this relationship (God, she had to stop calling it a relationship before anything even happened).

There was a party at one of their popular classmate's houses and literally everyone in the junior and senior classes had been invited because the kid lived in a mansion with eight bedrooms and he had an unlimited amount of liquor and weed. Paige had heard from Emily herself that she and her three best friends would all be in attendance, and when Emily had asked if Paige would be there, she had automatically agreed, although she had had no prior intentions of going. Which was why she was currently weaving her way through dozens of drunk and/or high teenagers in an effort to find Emily. She would admit that she had just a tiny bit of liquid courage (which amounted to one Solo cup of beer) to aid her in asking Emily out, but for the most part she was sticking to her plan. Her nice foolproof plan.

The one wrench that she had not foreseen was Hanna Marin.

As soon as Paige spotted Emily the other girl turned around, almost as if she could sense Paige. Their eyes met and Emily waved, beckoning Paige over to the chair she had managed to find and claim. Paige worked her way across the room, having to duck under a couple making out at one point, but she eventually found herself standing in front of Emily. "Hi," she said, smiling as charmingly as possible.

"Hey," Emily replied, clearly not drunk in the least. She was holding a cup of beer, but it looked like she was just nursing it. Maybe she was the designated driver for the night. It didn't matter, and Paige took a seat on the chair's arm, taking a sip of her own drink. The two of them chatted for a few minutes as Paige worked up her courage and, finally, she started.

"So, Emily, I was wondering if - "

"Emily Pamela Fields! Hey! You! Yeah, you! Sexy lady!"

Both Paige and Emily shifted slowly to stare at Hanna, who had appeared out of nowhere and was now bouncing on the balls of her feet, clearly intoxicated. "Come on, come on, you have to come and play this really cool game with me! It's the best!" She reached forward and grabbed Emily's hand, tugging her out of her seat. As the two girls left, Emily turned around to mouth 'sorry' at Paige, and Paige groaned, slipping into the vacated seat and pinching the bridge of her nose.

—

4. Somehow, through the grace of God - or just their science teacher Mr. Jacobs, who sort of looked like what God might look like - Paige and Emily ended up partnered together for their final project that was worth forty percent of their grade. Unfortunately, neither of them had a clue what they were doing, but, fortunately, that meant a lot of nights spent at each other's houses trying to figure out what to do.

"Paige, I have no idea what any of this means!" Emily groaned, putting down their ridiculously large textbook and flopping over on the bed dramatically. Paige immediately flicked her eyes back down to her own copy of the text, pretending that she hadn't been looking at Emily every chance she got. It was nearly impossible to pretend that she wasn't when Emily was in her bedroom, on the same bed as her, doing something as mundane as reading about molecules and still managing to look so flawless. No one could blame Paige for not being able to take her eyes off of her.

"I think I'm sort of starting to get it?" Paige offered, highlighting another sentence and then frowning when she realized that she had highlighted basically the entire page. "No, I'm really not, actually," she sighed, setting aside the book. "Maybe we should just tell Jacobs that he should fail us now," she suggested.

Emily nodded, eyes closed. "I think so. It would save us a lot of trouble. Repeating the year wouldn't be so bad, would it?"

Paige reclined on the bed next to her, taking a moment to just watch Emily: the way her hair splayed across the bed and their books, the way every breath made the jewelry on her chest shift up and down, and how her hand was carelessly tossed above her head and so close to Paige's own that if she moved even a fraction of an inch they could be touching.

"I can feel you staring, you know."

Paige's eyes shot away from Emily instantly, finding her ceiling instead. "I don't know what you're talking about," she challenged, although her cheeks were bright red. Shit, she'd been caught. But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe this was a sort of an opening, if Emily didn't find her creepy. Maybe now would be a good time to ask her out.

No, it wouldn't be. Of course it wouldn't be. It would be a terrible time, actually.

"It's okay, Paige," Emily laughed, sitting up and shaking her hair out before finger combing it. "Let's get back to work," she said, not unkindly.

Paige nodded, giving her a small smile, and picked up her textbook, trying to ignore the pang in her heart.

—

5. The two of them ran into each other one day in the park - they literally ran into each other. Paige was coming from one direction, focused on her morning workout as loud music blared in her ears. She had been trying to take her mind off of anything that has to do with Emily Fields. It had been two and a half months since the first time she tried to ask Emily out, and school had been let out for the summer now, so she didn't even have a chance anymore. That amount of failure did something to a girl's self-esteem. She was so mired in her own self-pity (which she rarely allowed herself to have because it was just so not what champions are made of) that she didn't see the other runner in front of her until they were colliding.

She rolled over on the ground several times and ended up staring at the sky, the wind knocked out of her. Her iPod had shut off, and she wondered briefly if it was broken, but then Emily's face swam into view and everything else vanished. Her lips were moving but Paige wasn't registering anything but the concern on her face and the smooth brown of her eyes and how stray strands of her hair were falling around her face, having escaped from her ponytail and -

"Will you go out with me?"

Suddenly the noise of the world came rushing back into Paige's ears and she couldn't believe she had just said that. At least she could blame the sudden traumatic event of her head smashing into the ground for the question, her brain rationalized, if Emily said no. Emily's face flickered through several different emotions and she suddenly smiled.

"Paige, maybe we should get you to a hospital."

It's then that Paige registered the blood running down the side of her face and, _oh_, maybe they should get to a hospital.

—

Three stitches and five hours later, Paige and Emily left Rosewood General. It was eleven then (the two of them were the only two in Rosewood who liked to go for six in the morning runs, apparently) and, despite Paige saying repeatedly that Emily didn't need to stay the entire time, Emily sat in the waiting room with her, wincing whenever Paige had to change the gauze that was pressed against her head. The woman who was manning the front desk assured them that head wounds bled quite a bit and looked worse than they were, and Paige was surprised that Emily was so adamant in getting a doctor to see Paige. As it was, it was still hard to see one, even on a Saturday morning in a sleepy little town.

"You really didn't have to stay," Paige said again, reaching up to touch the bandage on her head and wincing. Emily shook her head.

"I wanted to, Paige. I mean, it was my fault. I wasn't paying attention, I was too busy thinking about other things," she confessed, sliding into her car and waiting for Paige to get in on the other side and buckle herself in.

"I wasn't paying attention either, Em, so don't blame yourself. I'm just glad it wasn't you who almost cracked their head open," Paige murmured, flipping down the visor and checking out her wound in the mirror. That was definitely going to scar, not to mention look incredibly bad. At least it was the summertime now and she wasn't going to have to face people at school and their gossip; she was already enough fodder as it was.

"Yes, by the way."

Paige was so caught off-guard by Emily that she flipped up the visor with a thunk, glancing over at the girl. She was smiling - that half-smile again, the one that drove Paige crazy - and frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Yes, I'll go out with you."

Paige's stomach did that glorious twisting where it felt like she was simultaneously floating away and crashing down to earth at the same time and she wasn't quite sure if this was a dream (maybe she was in a coma and this was one of those really realistic dreams that you get brought out of and find out that it was twenty years later and everything you had ever known was different) or if she was actually awake and aware and conscious.

"Yes?"

"Yes."

By this time they had pulled up to Paige's house and Paige still hadn't fully comprehended what Emily had said. She went to unlock the door and pop the handle, but Emily's hand on her shoulder stopped her and she turned back. Emily's face was only inches from Paige's and her eyes were searching hers and then soft lips were on Paige's temple, just above her stitches. Then Emily pulled away and smiled, nodding towards the house. "I hope your dad doesn't give you too much of a problem when you explain the hospital bill."

"I - I don't either."

"Bye, Paige."

"Bye, Emily."

Paige got out of the car and Emily drove away, leaving Paige touching her temple and grinning like an idiot. It didn't take long before she got a text message and she fumbled for it in her bag, pulling it out and finding it to be from Emily.

Emily: _I was distracted at the park because I was thinking of you. _


End file.
